JJFBbennett travels to Taiwan Navigating the Metamodern City: Reflections from Taiwan What happens when ancient culture, vertical hyper-modernity, and raw street-level life collide through a traveller's lens? In my short video series exploring Taiwan—from the rain-slicked avenues of Taipei to the summit of Taipei 101 and the quiet contemplation of Liberty Square—travel becomes more than just sightseeing. It becomes an inquiry into metamodernism, architecture, art, and the everyday rituals that anchor our lives. 1. Reaching for the Sky: Why Do We Climb Towers? From the heights of Taipei 101, the sprawling urban basin unfolds beneath a shifting sky. Why do human beings feel an innate compulsion to build and ascend these vertical monuments? Climbing high above the metropolis isn’t just about the panoramic vista—it is an exercise in perspective. From hundreds of meters in the air, the city's frenetic pulse becomes an abstract circuit board of light, movement, and silence. It ex...
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Student Distraction and Teaching
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I think dealing with distraction has been with humans for many centuries. It isn't something we have to bash up our youth with. They are not a diminished generation. I like Elvis even though he destroyed my parent's minds
How do we measure diminished concentration? Many people have an unintentional injury in the pre-Google world. In America (land of Google) from 2000 to 2009 unintentional death rates declined by 29%. There is enough research that demonstrates a rise in IQ occurred alongside the rise of the internet. (Google Scholar search: Internet and IQ increase).
I believe that Learning is actually a distraction (disruptive and distractive).
I have a keen interest in how mindsets which focus on narrow points disconnects us with what is actually happening in what is a rich multi-faceted complex reality. Knowing actually positions the person. It can lessen adaptability and change.
An open learning mindset distracts us from fixed knowing. Education is in the learning business, not the knowing business. Education is a distraction. In regards to open-mindsets and fixed mindsets, I refer to psychologist Carol Dweck.
What occurs in our fabricated personal paradigm is often a disillusioned place that we think we know until something or somebody (teacher, mentor, peer) helps us transform towards a new sense of understanding. Learning is the distraction we need to assist us from the position based fixed mind of knowing. Sometimes allowing yourself to be distracted from what you know is difficult.
Check out how easily these pre-Google educated people are so easily distracted.
I have not read any research that specifically states that learning has diminished because of students' diminished capacity to think and learn. I do not believe that students' have any less attention span than my generation or my parents' generation. Students are staying longer at school, unintentional accidents have declined and research points to an increase in IQ has occurred whilst the internet reaches mass saturation. The ability to read and understand, to think deeply and philosophically, and to develop intellectually has not diminished.
21st Century learning requires different teaching methodologies and tools than what was generally employed in the 20th century. OECD links the growth of a nation's economy with learning, technology, and innovation. Singapore is now top of the OECD PISA ranks. They employ a program 'Teach Less Learn More' and employ high levels of connected technology. Singapore has changed significantly since my youth. Future secondary school students need to have the skills to work in the Global Digital Economy: Digital Economy Skills (read more):
It is possible that if learning is based on consuming content, listening, observing, note-taking, and regurgitation (20th Century Industrial technology methods) distraction can increase. However, if learning which actively engaging students with their learning through 21st Century networks and social technology, learning effectiveness can increase.
Anne Matthew paper on Managing distraction in 21st-century learning environments, Nuts and Bolts' offers some insights into learning, inter-connectivity, rapid multitasking, and attention switching:
The challenges of maintaining attention and managing distraction are not new barriers to learning; the novelty in 21st-century learning environments is the plethora of technological distractions beyond the control of the teacher. The extent to which distraction impacts upon the learning experience may well be dependent upon a number of factors, including learning and teaching approaches and individual learning preferences. Where the learning experience hinges upon student attention through listening, observing, or note-taking, the impact of the distraction indicates a potential failure in pedagogy in the new learning environment. The challenge presented is how best to engage learners effectively. The answer may lie at the intersection of attention economics and accepted principles of effective learning and teaching practices directed at maximizing student engagement in active learning (Matthew, 2012). In information-rich, highly connected learning environments, the most effective learning, and teaching practices will be those that deploy and structure attention to the greatest effect by actively engaging students with their learning. It is suggested that in seeking the most appropriate pedagogy, the learner’s role in actively shaping their own learning experience should be supported and such support should extend to use of ‘technologies of their own choice where appropriate’ (JISC, 2009, p. 51)
The Metamodern Smudge: Seeing Growth on the Frame My use of the phrase "Fingerprint on the frame" functions as a metamodernist artifact. From my perspective, metamodernism oscillates between modernist sincerity and postmodern irony, and this concept sits precisely at that intersection. It recognises that the artwork within the frame is a construction, while also valuing the human touch that created it. More than just recognition, it is the fundamental identifier. In this space, the smudge is not just an artistic signature; it is a map of personal growth. It reveals the traces of our experiences and the impact of our interactions with the world around us. The transparency of glass symbolises the invisible cultural conditions that shape our perspectives, allowing us to see through to the complex realities that influence our creativity and expression. This interplay creates a deeper understanding of both the art and the artist, acknowledging that every mark left behind tells ...
When Atoms Reach for Sacred Altars What do you feel when you touch something sacred? Do you want to touch sacred art? Are we creatures bound by thermodynamics, driven by an instinctual urge to exchange heat, shed skin cells, and mingle our matter with the monuments we revere? To stand before a sacred masterpiece is to experience a gravitational pull—an irresistible desire to collapse the space between subject and object, to leave an oily fingerprint as proof of shared existence. The gallery border is a social construct attempting to enforce absolute vacuum, forbidding the inevitable entropy of human connection. To reach out anyway is to assert that our physical reality is not separate from the sublime, but bound to it by the very matter we carry on our fingertips. Reaching across that barrier is a quiet rebellion against social decorum: a desperate want for quantum entanglement that collapses the boundary between ideal beauty and our messy, lived reality. Be Creative a...
JJFBbennett travels China Travel China vblog A travelogue through transit, urban spaces, and metamodern art. Follow the journey from Darwin into mainland China—spanning flight corridors, local bus routes and the architectural textures of Guangzhou. Blending visual observation, posthuman reflections, and ambient digital art, this series explores mobility, modern landscape, and the hero's journey in transit. Travel serves as the raw material for my digital art, transformed through the lens of experiential video. I approach video recording much like a traditional painter uses charcoal: as an immediate, fluid sketch. Where a static photograph freezes time, a video sketch captures gesture, momentum, light shifts, and the living pulse of an environment. Through editing, video becomes more than a record of movement—it becomes a site of active reflection. It allows me to re-enter the experience, positioning myself within the atmosphere of the place. This process of thinking about think...
